FRONTLINE/WORLD . Iraq - Saddam's Road to Hell - A journey into the killing fields . PBS AlSadr Killings In the early hours of August 2, 1990, more than 100,000 Iraqi troops moved tanks, helicopters and trucks across the border into Kuwait. Iraq maintained the worlds fourthlargest military and had mobilized an overwhelming invading force. Within an hour, they reached Kuwait City, and by daybreak, Iraqi tanks were attacking Dasman Palace, the royal residence. The emir had already fled into the Saudi desert, but his private guard and his younger halfbrother, Sheik Faud alAhmad alSabah, had stayed behind to defend their home. The sheik was shot and killed, and according to an Iraqi soldier who deserted after the assault, his body was placed in front of a tank and run over. It was Saddams idea alone to invade Kuwait. He had gambled that he could get away with seizing the tiny oilrich nation to help pay off debts.

But his gamble did not pay off  he had misread the interests of the international community and the United States in a stable Middle East. After the invasion, Saddam defied orders to retreat and the U.N. imposed sanctions. After months of deliberations and with U.N. support, the United States and international Coalition forces launched a fullscale air and missile attack on Iraq on January 16, 1991. A ground assault followed a month later, and Saddams troops were quickly forced out of Kuwait. The United Nations declared an end to the war on April 11, 1991. Charges and evidence The Iraqi military allegedly committed crimes while in Kuwait. Evidence suggests that it tortured and killed hundreds of Kuwaiti nationals and people from other nations. Foreign hostages were taken, Kuwaiti properties were looted, and Iraqi forces set fire to more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells and opened pipelines to let oil pour into the Gulf. In addition to these crimes, Saddam may be tried for the crime of aggression. An Iraqi law dating back to the 1950s prohibits the act of aggressive war against other Arab countries.

Iraq invades Kuwait - Aug 02, 1990 - HISTORY.com Iraq invades Kuwait Publisher A+E Networks At about 2 a.m. local time, Iraqi forces invade Kuwait, Iraq’s tiny, oil-rich neighbor. Kuwait’s defense forces were rapidly overwhelmed, and those that were not destroyed retreated to Saudi Arabia. The emir of Kuwait, his family, and other government leaders fled to Saudi Arabia, and within hours Kuwait City had been captured and the Iraqis had established a provincial government. By annexing Kuwait, Iraq gained control of 20 percent of the world’s oil reserves and, for the first time, a substantial coastline on the Persian Gulf. The same day, the United Nations Security Council unanimously denounced the invasion and demanded Iraq’s immediate withdrawal from Kuwait. On August 6, the Security Council imposed a worldwide ban on trade with Iraq. On August 9, Operation Desert Shield, the American defense of Saudi Arabia, began as U.S. forces raced to the Persian Gulf. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, meanwhile, built up his occupying army in Kuwait to about 300,000 troops. On November 29, the U.N.

Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if it failed to withdraw by January 15, 1991. Hussein refused to withdraw his forces from Kuwait, which he had established as a province of Iraq, and some 700,000 allied troops, primarily American, gathered in the Middle East to enforce the deadline. At 4:30 p.m. EST on January 16, 1991, Operation Desert Storm, the massive U.S.-led offensive against Iraq, began as the first fighter aircraft were launched from Saudi Arabia and off U.S. and British aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. All evening, aircraft from the U.S.-led military coalition pounded targets in and around Baghdad as the world watched the events transpire on television footage transmitted live via satellite from Iraq. Operation Desert Storm was conducted by an international coalition under the supreme command of U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf and featured forces from 32 nations, including Britain, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. During the next six weeks, the allied force engaged in an intensive air war against Iraq’s military and civil infrastructure and encountered little effective resistance from the Iraqi air force or air defenses.

Iraqi ground forces were helpless during this stage of the war, and Hussein’s only significant retaliatory measure was the launching of SCUD missile attacks against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Saddam hoped that the missile attacks would provoke Israel to enter the conflict, thus dissolving Arab support of the war. At the request of the United States, however, Israel remained out of the war. On February 24, a massive coalition ground offensive began, and Iraq’s outdated and poorly supplied armed forces were rapidly overwhelmed. By the end of the day, the Iraqi army had effectively folded, 10,000 of its troops were held as prisoners, and a U.S. air base had been established deep inside Iraq. After less than four days, Kuwait was liberated, and the majority of Iraq’s armed forces had either surrendered, retreated to Iraq, or been destroyed. On February 28, U.S. President George Bush declared a cease-fire, and on April 3 the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 687, specifying conditions for a formal end to the conflict.

According to the resolution, Bush’s cease-fire would become official, some sanctions would be lifted, but the ban on Iraqi oil sales would continue until Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction under U.N. supervision. On April 6, Iraq accepted the resolution, and on April 11 the Security Council declared it in effect. During the next decade, Saddam Hussein frequently violated the terms of the peace agreement, prompting further allied air strikes and continuing U.N. sanctions. In the Persian Gulf War, 148 American soldiers were killed and 457 wounded. The other allied nations suffered about 100 deaths combined during Operation Desert Storm. There are no official figures for the number of Iraqi casualties, but it is believed that at least 25,000 soldiers were killed and more than 75,000 were wounded, making it one of the most one-sided military conflicts in history. It is estimated that 100,000 Iraqi civilians died from wounds or from lack of adequate water, food, and medical supplies directly attributable to the Persian Gulf War. In the ensuing years, more than one million Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the subsequent U.N. sanctions.

Related Videos Why did Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990? - University Social studies - Marked by Teachers.com Why did Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990? Extracts from this document... Introduction Navah Bekhor Why did Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990? On 2nd August 1990, Iraqi troops crossed the Kuwaiti border in a declaration of war. In order to identify the motivations behind this invasion of Kuwait it is important to address both the events that led to the invasion and the more general issues such as the political and economic climate in the Arab world. It has been argued that the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait is deeply rooted in the action taken by the colonial powers directly after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, in that by defining the boundaries of the region arbitrarily they produced a fertile ground for conflict that was to remain tense throughout the century. In particular are the economic disputes between the two regions that I will address later in this essay. In addition the very nature of Saddam Hussein's personality, which has often been characterized by his intense paranoia and controlling nature could also be regarded as a contributing factor in the decision to invade.

There is also the argument that Iraq invaded Kuwait because it believed it could do so without intervention from the western powers. Saddam Hussein misjudged the importance of the region to the west to his own detriment. I will now refer to the particular or the direct causes of the decision taken by Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990. In order to identify the root of the conflict I will begin by addressing the way in which the boundaries of the Middle East were determined and to what extent these decisions have affected the conflict. ...read more. Middle Similarly to the claims made over the overproduction of the OPEC quotas, this 'theft' was regarded by Iraq as an act of war. However, given the fact that Iraq was bound by its membership to the Arab league and its recognition of Kuwait as an independent state, can it be argued that the invasion of Kuwait was merely a matter of leadership? This begs the question of how far Saddam Hussein manipulated these grievances to act as a shield whilst pursuing his own interests.

I shall therefore consider the role of Saddam's personality in the conflict It can be argued that Saddam Hussein had and continues to retain an overwhelming desire to dominate both the Arab world and the Persian Gulf and that success in the annexation of Kuwait would have greatly facilitated this desire. Saddam had already achieved this to some extent with his victory in the war with Iran. Under Saddam Hussein Iraq developed a new, Iraqi-centered and imperial brand of pan-Arabism. Its main message was that, due to its heroic and rich history, starting with ancient Sumer and Babylon and ending with Saddam, Iraq is the natural leader of the Arabs. As a result, everything that benefits Iraq will eventually benefit all the Arabs. This message sought to legitimize political maneuvers that clearly contradicted Arab solidarity. The invasions of Iran and of Kuwait are two examples of such maneuvers. Saddam is a leader that is infamous for the brutality of his regime and has never been one to shirk away from the prospect of war. ...read more. Conclusion In addition he assumed that the surrounding Arab nations would support the action taken. These assumptions are ultimately what led to his failure as he underestimated the importance of Kuwait to the Western and Arab worlds.

If Saddam had succeeded in the annexation of Kuwait, a large proportion of the oil economy would have been under his control, which was perhaps another motivation for the invasion and something that the West in particular was not prepared to accept. In order to conclude this account of the motivations behind the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 I would argue that whilst the long running disputes between Iraq and Kuwait were undoubtedly a major factor, the international and domestic climate of this period as well as relations with the U.S also played a huge part in the decision made by Saddam to actively declare war on Kuwait. Those who have studied this conflict have advocated a number of motivations behind Saddam Hussein's actions all of which are well documented and supported by much evidence. None of these arguments can be deemed correct or incorrect as in my opinion it was a combination of all the factors voiced by these commentators that contributed to the tensions that existed in the region prior to the Gulf war. Therefore, whilst the direct causes of the invasion can be seen as Iraq's dissatisfaction with its position in the Gulf, the indirect or profound reasons are equally credible and useful in understanding Iraq's motivations in invading Kuwait. 1 Sitry M. L & Cerf.

C 1991 pg61 2 ibid pg 17 3 ibid pg 19 4 ibid pg 63 5 ibid pg 63 6 ibid pg 63 7 ...read more. The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our University Degree International Relations section. Found what you're looking for? Start learning 29% faster today 150,000+ documents available Why Did Iraq Invade Kuwait ? Why DID Iraq Invade Kuwait? -- A Brief History By G. Simon Harak, S. J. Of course it is impossible to undertake a full history of the Middle East, and of U.S. involvement there. So let me present a brief historical sketch which I believe will help our understanding of the Gulf War.[1] 1. Nationalism in the modern sense was largely unknown to the Arab world until the middle twentieth century. The maneuvering of powerful families and the interests of colonial powers often defined spheres of influence.

To focus on the area of modern Kuwait, Britain had an agreement from 1899 with the ruling al-Sabah family that they would not cede or sell any territory without British consent. The al-Sabah family, always growing richer, kept trying to play British colonial interests off against the Ottomans, the Saud family to the west, and the provinces of Basra and Baghdad. It had been traditional in the Arab understanding to consider that the territory from Baghdad south to the Gulf (including what is now Kuwait) was "Iraq." The al-Sabah family (of modern Kuwait) wanted to "carve out" from that territory a fiefdom for themselves and their economic activities, free from any outside power -- Arab or colonialist. 2. After WWI, the secret Sikes-Picot agreement divided up the Arab world into "spheres of influence" between England and France. The Arab populaces, recently "liberated" from the domination of the Ottoman Empire by those powers, felt betrayed by this action when they learned of it. It still rankles today. The agreement was given official status by the League of Nations when the provinces of Basra and Baghdad became a British "mandate" (read: colony).

Thus in 1922, Sir Percy Cox, Britain's steward in the Gulf, arbitrarily and unilaterally decided to "draw a line in the sand," creating modern Iraq. He made Iraq to include the provinces of Basra and Baghdad, but also included the Kurds to the north (abrogating the 1920 Ottoman-Allies Treaty of Sevres which promised the Kurds independence[2]). The same move "created" Saudi Arabia, and the country of Kuwait. The arrangement favored the free status of the al-Sabah family and deprived Iraq of easy access to the Gulf (the Shatt-al-Arab waterway was shared with Iran), ignoring the traditional understanding of Iraq's extension to the Gulf. 3. Achieving "de jure" independence from England (it was now a British protectorate) in 1932, Iraq tried, in the late 1930s, to "restore" Kuwait to Baghdad. In 1938, the Kuwaiti parliament agreed, voting to reunite with Iraq. The al-Sabah family immediately dissolved the parliament. 4.

A sense of Arab nationalism began to grow in the post-WWII decade, evidenced by the nationalist revolution in Iraq in 1958. In 1961, Kuwait became formally independent from England, and the popular Abd al-Karim Qassim renewed Iraq's traditional claim to Kuwait. The British immediately sent its troops to the region and enlisted the help of the Arab League. After Qassim's overthrow and death, Iraq ended its boycott of the Arab League and formally recognized Kuwaiti independence in 1963. 5. But the United States was by then replacing Britain as the outside power acting in the Gulf area. The US power was at its peak after WWII, and it wanted to protect its oil assets. Its overall strategy was the same as England's and France's: keep the political families' sheikdoms, emirates and kingdoms just strong enough to fight with each other, but not strong enough to destabilize the region, or to have any one of them become a unifying force for all Arabs. That way the US could keep overall control of the oil in the area.

A problem arose in that strategy when, for example, Iran (which is a Persian, not an Arab country) nationalized its oil companies in 1951. The US-CIA response was to overthrow the elected government of Muhammad Mossadeq, and to replace it with a dictatorship by the Shah.[3] 6. After the 1967 war, the Arab countries again saw themselves betrayed by US-Israeli interests. One result was the rise of militant nationalism in such places as Syria and Iraq. By 1969 the Ba'ath party had risen to power in Iraq. As Iraq became more powerful with its oil revenues, one US-CIA strategy was to arm the Kurds in northern Iraq, to keep Iraq internally weak enough so as to be unable to challenge Iran. All that changed, of course, when the Shi'a Muslims overthrew the American-supported Shah in 1979. The US now needed a strong Iraq to oppose the newly inimical Iranians, and so (along with much of the West) supported Saddam Hussein in his eight-year (1980-88) war against Iran. The US therefore ignored Iraq's brutalities.

One week before the invasion of Kuwait, the Congress sought to place trade restrictions on Iraq for its human rights violations, but Bush refused to go along with it. 7. During the Iran-Iraq war, the al-Sabah family gave some $17 billion to Iraq. It saw the Iranian Shi'a revolution as a threat to itself, and so financed a long-standing Arab-Persian (Iranian) conflict. But it also had established farms and settlements over the Iraqi border. Most important, the al-Sabah family was also drilling in the Rumailah oil field. The Rumailah oil field is 95 percent in Iraq, but the al-Sabah family brought in the most sophisticated American oil-drilling technology to "slant drill" in its 5 percent of Rumailah while the Iraqis were unable to drill during the war (some of my Arabist friends were fairly sure there was an agreement about this: oil for financial backing). It sold that oil, at below OPEC prices, to Japan and the US (Kuwait has always played this role: increasing its sale of oil to the importers in times of crisis).

The al-Sabah family by now was unimaginably rich, with an estimated wealth of some 90 billion dollars. They had invested about 50 billion dollars in the stocks of US companies. 8. After the Iran-Iraq war, Hussein was increasingly isolated, politically and economically. He was some 60 billion dollars in debt from the war, and the West had cut off his credits after he had a British reporter executed as a spy. The West was also concerned that its overall strategy would be upset (see par. #5 above), since Iraq now had an army second in power only to Israel in the Middle East. 9. Meanwhile, the al-Sabah family continued to slant-drill, and to sell to the West at below OPEC prices, despite Hussein's actions in the Arab League and protests to OPEC. It continued to deny him access to the Gulf. By now, Hussein was requesting the use of the unpopulated Bubiyan and Warba islands, to avoid having to use Basra on the Shatt-al-Arab, since he shared that waterway to the Gulf with Iran.

Finally, the al-Sabah family declared that the $17 billion it had given Hussein was not a gift (or an exchange for the Rumailah oil, see par. #7), but a loan which must be repaid.[4] 10. Hussein therefore began to think about using his armed forces to insist upon resolution of the border and monetary disputes. He threatened to do so about a year before the August 2nd invasion at OPEC and Arab League meetings; hence the now famous meetings with Robert Dole and other US senators[5] in April, 1990 and April Glaspie in July, 1990. At that July meeting, less than a month before the invasion of Kuwait, Hussein complained that the borders of Kuwait and Iraq were drawn in colonial times, by colonial powers. Glaspie replied, ï¿½"We studied history at school. They taught us to say freedom or death. I think you know well that we... have our experience with the colonialists. We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."[6] Hussein then began to mass troops along the border of Kuwait.

The Arabs were concerned, and arranged for a conference at Jidda on July 31st, 1990.[7] According to Jordan's King Hussein, there was a pre-conference, closed door meeting at which the Al-Saud and al-Sabah families agreed to Hussein's terms (in addition to forgiving the debt, they were each to give $10 billion toward the Iraqi war debt). That agreement was then to be "arrived at" in Jidda. But on July 30th, Sheikh Sabeh Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah, the brother of the Emir, and foreign minister, was speaking to Jordanian diplomats. He ridiculed the Iraqi forces, and when the Jordanians rebuked him, he said, "If they don't like it, let them occupy our territory ... we are going to bring in the Americans." Again, this was three days before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. At Jidda the next day, he announced to Izzat Ibrahim his intention to offer Saddam Hussein $500,000 (not the $10 billion agreed upon). The meeting broke up after two hours; two days later, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

NOTES [1] This history is drawn mostly from an article by the editors of the Middle East Report, Suite 119, 1500 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., "Behind the Gulf Crisis: A History of Conflict," in Crisis in the Gulf (Washington, D.C.: The Institute for Policy Studies, 1990). [2] For a more complete history of the Kurds, see Rachelle Marshall, "The Kurds' Suffering is Rooted in Past Betrayals," The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, May/June, 1991, Vol. X, No. 1., pp. 8ff. [3] It is interesting to note that the Schwarzkopf family was already established in the Iran by the time of the coup, since the President of the US had sent Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. to Iran to train Iran's police force. The New York Times, January 1, 1991, p. A10. Joe Stork and Martha Wenger report that eventually, the US had some 50,000 advisers in Iran, to help expand and train the Shah's secret police.

Middle East Report, Jan./Feb. 1991, No. 168, Vol. 1 #1, p. 22. [4] Walid Khalidi lists seven such areas of contention between Iraq and Kuwait in "Iraq vs. Kuwait: Claims and Counterclaims," in The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions ed. by Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (New York and Toronto: Random House, 1991), pp. 57-65. This volume is an excellent compilation of sources. [5] Also present were Alan Simpson, Howard Metzenbaum, James McClure, and Frank Murkowski, together with US Ambassador April Glaspie. [6] Robert Fisk, ï¿½Saddam Hussein: The Last Great Tyrant,ï¿½ The Independent, December 30, 2000. This entire article is instructive. [7] The following comes from an exclusive interview with Jordan's King Hussein, in The Village Voice, March 5, 1991.

Voices in the Wilderness 1460 West Carmen Avenue Chicago, IL 60640 Tel: (773) 784-8065 Fax: (773) 784-8837 | e-mail: info@vitw.org Iraq & Kuwait California State University, Northridge January 2003 In the United States of America, it is almost beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse to address the question, why did Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait in 1990? Even to ask the question, one risks the appearance of supporting a repressive dictatorship, and to the extent that the question is entertained at all, the simplistic answer proffered by political leaders is that Saddam Hussein is an aggressive tyrant, bent on territorial acquisition and the subjugation of other nations. He is a modern day Hitler. The same answer is utilized to explain why Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. This standard answer is easy to accept, in part, because of the well-documented brutality of Saddam's regime, including human rights violations committed by his government against the Iraqi people, and especially the Kurds.

In spite of partial truths imbedded in this standard explanation, it smacks of propaganda. Much more needs to be understood by the American public before it allows its government to wage war against Iraq. The history of Iraq, Kuwait, Britain, and the United States reveals that the reasons for the Iraqi invasions of Kuwait and Iran are far more complex and interesting than the standard answer allows. Over a period of decades, and especially in recent years, Britain and the U.S. have consciously manipulated tensions in the region and have masterfully set into motion sequences of events leading to the Iraqi invasions. The purpose of these manipulations was to increase power and control over middle eastern governments and their oil resources by elite U.S. and British interests. This short historical outline is far from comprehensive, and even the references are sketchy. The main purpose of this essay is to offer student peace activists, and others who might be unfamiliar with Middle Eastern history, a few key talking points and an historical context from which to support their efforts to block the drive toward war. This outline is organized by historical chronology into sections. Much of the beginning of this essay relies heavily on a single reference, Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed, by Ralph Schoenman [1].

Relevant web site addresses are sprinkled throughout and are provided for readers who seek a greater depth of understanding than this short outline alone provides. Early History The ancient civilizations of Sumer and Babylon originated in Mesopotamia (the Greek word for "between rivers"), near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Modern day Kuwait began in the eighteenth century as a small village on the Persian Gulf. "Kuwait," the word for "small human settlement," was so named by Iraqi rulers of that era. Throughout the nineteenth century and up to World War I, Kuwait was a "Qadha," a district within the Basra Province, and it was an integral part of Iraq under the administrative rule of the Ottoman Empire. British Domination As the victors of World War I, France and Britain dismantled the Ottoman Empire and the Arab nation for their own colonial purposes. The Iraq Petroleum Company was created in 1920 with 95% of the shares going to Britain, France, and the U.S.

In order to weaken Arab nationalism, Britain blocked Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf by severing the territorial entity, "Kuwait" from the rest of Iraq in 1921 and 1922. This new British colony, Kuwait, was given artificial boundaries with no basis in history or geography. King Faisal I of the new Iraqi state ruled under British military oversight, but his administration never accepted the amputation of the Kuwait district and the denial of Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf. Attempts by Faisal to build a railway to Kuwait and port facilities on the Gulf were vetoed by Britain. These and other similar British colonial policies made Kuwait a focus of the Arab national movement in Iraq, and a symbol of Iraqi humiliation at the hands of the British. Resistance to the British imposed separation of Kuwait from Iraq continued through the 1930s.

In 1932, the British Agent in Baghdad forced the Iraqi leadership to enter into "correspondence" on the delimitation of boundaries for British Kuwait, but the Iraqi Chamber of Deputies repudiated these "correspondences." A mass movement of Kuwaiti youth called the "Free Kuwaiti Movement" defied British rule and submitted a petition requesting the Iraqi government to reunify Kuwait and Iraq. Fearing an uprising, the Kuwaiti Sheik agreed to the establishment of a legislative council to represent the "Free Kuwaitis." The first meeting of the council in 1938 resulted in an unanimous resolution demanding that Kuwait revert back to Iraq. That same year, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq informed the British Ambassador in Baghdad that: "The Ottoman-British Agreement of 1913 recognizes Kuwait as a District under the jurisdiction of the Province of Basra. Since sovereignty over Basra has been transferred from the Ottoman state to the Iraqi state, that sovereignty has to include Kuwait under the terms of the 1913 Agreement.

Iraq has not recognized any change in the status of Kuwait." (quoted in [1]) A popular uprising within Kuwait to reunify with Iraq erupted on March 10, 1939. The Kuwaiti Sheik, with British military support and "advisers," crushed the uprising, and killed or imprisoned its participants. King Ghazi of Iraq publicly demanded the release of the prisoners and warned the Sheik to end the repression of the Free Kuwaiti Movement. Ghazi ignored warnings by Britain to discontinue such public statements, and on April 5, 1939, he was found dead. It was widely assumed that he was assassinated by British agents. Faisal II was an infant at that time, and Nuri es-Said, a former officer of the Ottoman Army with British loyalties, became the de facto leader of Iraq. U.S. Domination Following World War II, British rule was gradually replaced by U.S. neo-colonial domination of the Middle East. The new state of Israel became an important instrument for U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil in the post war era.

With the U.S./Israeli sponsored coup of 1953 that deposed Mossadegh, the popularly elected president of Iran, and installed the Shah in his place, the U.S. became the dominant imperial power in the region. In 1955 the U.S. and Britain inaugurated the Baghdad Pact, an anti-Soviet security agreement for Middle Eastern nations, including Iraq. The Baghdad Pact was widely perceived in the Arab world as alliance of regimes subordinate to British and U.S. power, and it was greeted with popular protests and riots. Nuri es-Said responded to the protests by jailing opposition leaders who demanded that Iraq withdraw from the pact. However, he also began secret negotiations with the U.S. and Britain for the return of Kuwait to Iraq in order to placate Iraqi national sentiment. For two years, appeals for the return of Kuwait to Iraq intensified. In January 1958, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri es-Said addressed a meeting of the Baghdad Pact and publicly urged the return of Kuwait to Iraq. All pact members agreed with the proposal, with the sole exception of Britain.

Further diplomatic gestures from Iraq to Britain were rebuffed, and finally Iraq informed Britain that it was preparing documents and copies of secret understandings together with a formal memorandum, to be published before the world in July 1958. The British Ambassador responded to the Iraqi government that Great Britain had "approved in principle" the unification of Kuwait and Iraq, but requested a meeting in London with the Iraqi and British Prime Ministers and other government officials. But this meeting never took place, because the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown on July 14, 1958 in a revolution led by General Abdel Karim Qassim. King Faisal II and Nuri es-Said were executed, and Britain immediately thereafter abrogated the agreement to return Kuwait to Iraq. News of the coup triggered an uprising of the poor and dispossessed in Baghdad. The crowds attacked the British embassy and other targets. The U.S. did not initially respond to the coup, but the political upheaval of the subsequent popular uprising pushed the new regime further to the left than it had originally intended. The new government lifted the ban on the Iraqi Communist Party, and that modest step toward democracy in turn mobilized the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

CIA director Alan Dulles assigned the job of incapacitating Qassim to the euphemistically named Technical Services Division (TDS) of the CIA. The head of the TDS in 1960, Stanley Gottlieb, initiated a program to assassinate Qassim. One failed assassination attempt in this context was made by Saddam Hussein. Qassim continued to alienate the U.S. and Britain, and Britain further exacerbated relations by declaring its Kuwait colony free and independent in 1961. Qassim held a press conference on June 19, 1961 at which he declared that "Iraq regards Kuwait as an integral part of its territory." Following that press conference, Britain quickly massed troops in Kuwait with naval support in the Gulf. Kuwait gained admission to the United Nations in 1963, the same year that Qassim was killed and his government overthrown in a CIA supported coup led by the Baath Party. Saddam Hussein's Rise to Power By 1965, Saddam Hussein's cousin became Secretary General of the Baathist Party.

In 1968 Saddam Hussein was made Deputy Secretary General and Saddam and his Baathist supporters succeeded in seizing state power, all with CIA backing. What followed was a slaughter of the left, including the murder and torture of Iraqi Communist Party members and trade unionists. Throughout the 1970s, Iraq offered compromises to Kuwait's rulers that would enable Iraq to gain access to its former islands in the Gulf. But no agreements were reached, and the floating border separating the two countries crept northward. In mid-July, 1979, Saddam replaced Al Bakr as president of Iraq. He reportedly uncovered a conspiracy against his government with the result that twenty-one high government and Baath Party officials were executed. The armed forces and the Baath Party were purged and there were widespread arrests. A short time later, in August 1979 a general amnesty was announced that resulted in the release of Kurdish prisoners, members of the Iraqi Communist Party, and others. However, Amnesty International reported continual human rights abuses from that period.

That same year, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, proposed to Saddam Hussein that he invade Iran and annex Khuzistan, thereby providing Iraq access to the Gulf through the narrow waterway, Shatt-al Arab. The U.S. hoped to use Iraq to counter the radicalism of the Khomeini regime in Iran from spreading to oppressed peoples of the Emirates and to Saudi Arabia. Saddam Hussein was guaranteed financial backing in the form of loans from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other nations. About half a million Iranians and Iraqis were killed in the Iran Iraq war, and unbeknownst to Hussein, the U.S. and Israel also secretly armed the Iranians so as to weaken both Iran and Iraq. President Ronald Reagan's special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam Hussein once in late December 1983 and again in March 1984. These visits paved the way for the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Iraq at a time when Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons in his war against Iran. Iraq had been removed from the U.S.

State Department's list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982, and Iraq went on a buying spree to purchase weapons from U.S. and German companies. These weapons were used in 1988 for attacks against the Kurds. (see: and the Democracy Now! piece at: ) Prelude to the 1991 Gulf War The war with Iran left Iraq in ruins. When Saddam Hussein launched his eight year war against Iran, Iraq had $40 billion in hard currency reserves. But by the end of the war, his nation was $80 billion in debt. Iraq was pressed to repay the $80 billion to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, with interest. While Iraq was distracted by its war, Kuwait had accumulated 900 square miles of Iraqi territory by advancing its border with Iraq northward. This was presented to Iraq as a fait accompli and it gave Kuwait access to the Rumaila oil field. The Kuwaiti Sheik had purchased the Santa Fe Drilling Corporation of Alhambra, California, for $2.3 billion and proceeded to use its slant drilling equipment to gain access to the Iraqi oil field. The main source of earnings for Iraq was petroleum whose price fluctuated depending on international production levels.

By 1990, Kuwait, under U.S. tutelage had increased its oil production to undermine OPEC quotas thereby driving the price of Iraqi oil down from $28 per barrel to $11 per barrel and further ruining the Iraqi economy. Appeals from Iraq, Iran, Libya, and other countries to the Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to stick to OPEC production levels were met with increased naval activity in the Persian Gulf by the United States. In February 1990, Saddam Hussein spoke at the Amman summit on the relationship between oil production and the U.S. navy buildup and warned that the Gulf people and the rest of the Arabs faced subordination to American interests. Following this speech the Western press carried stories of Saddam's missiles, chemical weapons and nuclear potential. The Israeli press speculated about pre-emptive strikes such as the Israeli attack on Iraq's nuclear power plant in 1981. In spite of Iraqi diplomatic appeals, Kuwait and the Emirates increased oil production, harming their own economic interests, but damaging Iraq's even more so. Kuwait refused to relinquish Iraqi territory it had acquired during the Iran Iraq war which Kuwait had helped finance.

Kuwait also rejected production quotas and rejected appeals to cease pumping oil from Iraq's Rumaila oil reserve. It refused to forgo any of Iraq's debt. On September 18, 1990, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry published verbatim the transcripts of meetings between Saddam Hussein and high level U.S. officials. Knight-Ridder columnist James McCartney acknowledged that the transcripts were not disputed by the U.S. State Department. U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie informed Hussein that, "We have no opinion on...conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait." She reiterated this position several times, and added, "Secretary of State James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasize this instruction." A week before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Baker's spokesperson, Margaret Tutwiler and Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly both stated publicly that "the United States was not obligated to come to Kuwait's aid if it were attacked." (Santa Barbara News-Press September 24, 1990 cited in [1]).

Two days before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly testified before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that the United States has no defense treaty relationship with any Gulf country." The New York Daily News editorialized on September 29, 1990, "Small wonder Saddam concluded he could overrun Kuwait. Bush and Co. gave him no reason to believe otherwise." (quoted in [1]). The 1991 Gulf War On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait and quickly gained control of the country. The United States, along with the United Nations, demanded the immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces. Attempts by Iraq to negotiate withdrawal were rebuffed by the United States. U.S. military forces in the region had already rehearsed battle plans to repel an Iraqi invasion. On January 16, 1991, U.S. and other allied forces launched a devastating attack of Iraq and its armed forces in Kuwait. The Allied bombing was intended to damage Iraq's infrastructure so as to hinder its ability to prosecute war by lowering both civilian and military morale. The United States led the allied forces, but 34 nations also provided troops and/or financial support for the military operations.

Among these are: Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Britain, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, and The United Arab Emirates. (See: #gulfwardates or ) U.S. media portrayed the Iraqi military as a global threat and as a formidable military opponent to the United States. Nevertheless, the military outcome of the war was one-sided in the extreme. Of the more than 500,000 U.S. troops engaged in the war, 148 died in battle, many from "friendly fire." Total allied losses were minimal. By contrast, in June 1991, the U.S. military reported more than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers killed, 300,000 wounded. Some human rights groups claimed a higher number of Iraqis killed in battle. According to Baghdad, civilian casualties numbered more than 35,000.

However, after the war, some scholars report that the number of Iraqi soldiers killed was significantly less than 100,000. Whatever the numbers, the Iraqi army was completely routed, and all surviving Iraqi military units withdrew to Iraq. "Desert Storm," as the war was called, destroyed 80% of Iraq's weaponry, and the international monitoring and inspections that followed the war (see the next section), resulted in at least 90% of Iraq's pre-invasion weaponry eliminated. Former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, and International Action Center have reported devastating effects of the U.S. and British bombing on the Iraqi civilian population, including the use of depleted uranium from U.S. bombs that have led to cancer and unprecedented levels of birth defects in Iraq. More than 600,000 pounds of depleted uranium was left in Iraq after the war (See the International Action Center web site: ). The war also had negative repercussions for U.S. soldiers. Some have reported the effects "Gulf War Syndrome" and other debilitating health consequences from exposure to harmful chemical and/or biological agents (see e.g. ) U.S.

Disinformation Campaigns It is difficult to document or even estimate the extent of psychological operations, propaganda projects, and disinformation propagated by the U.S. government to enlist public support for military campaigns against Iraq. However, two examples have been documented and are well known: false reports of an Iraqi troop buildup threatening Saudi Arabia, and a manufactured story recited in congressional hearings about Iraqi soldiers killing newborn babies in a Kuwaiti hospital. The film "Hidden Wars" [2] and Pacifica National Radio have presented coverage of these stories. Fabricated Report of Iraqi Troop buildup The following description is taken from The U.S. administration made the claim that the Iraqis had amassed troops and tanks along the Saudi border and were poised to invade the kingdom. This claim was widely relayed by the main media. The only problem with these allegations was that they were utterly false. The former Soviet Union had provided satellite pictures, taken on September 11 and 13, 1990, of the border (actually, they were selling the pictures for $1,500 each) that clearly indicated that no concentration of Iraqi troops and equipment was in sight.

Major news organizations like ABC News (Sam Donaldson) or The Washington Post (Bob Woodward) sat on the pictures and never used them. The only U.S. news organization that indeed published them was a regional paper, The St. Petersburg Times (Florida). Those pictures clearly showed, however, the concentration of U.S. troops on the Saudi side of the border! John R. MacArthur (and Ben Haig Bagdikian) documented this falsity in their book, "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War," University of California Press; reprint edition 1993; ISBN: 0520083989. MacArthur also cited these facts in his above-mentioned speech, . Brian Becker debunked this claim in detail in his report. Jean Heller, the Editor of The St. Petersburg Times hired a U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Reagan Administration, and a former image specialist for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Peter Zimmerman, to analyze the satellite photographs, to no avail. There simply were no Iraqi troops poised to invade Saudi Arabia.

The "Incubator Story" The following description is taken from "The readers may recall the testimony before Congress on October 10, 1990 of a 15-year old Kuwaiti woman, Nayirah (her last name was kept confidential). She had witnessed a terrifying deed by the Iraqi invaders of Kuwait. In her own words: 'I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital. While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.' The story about the 312 babies made the news with a vengeance. President Bush (that would be George I) repeated it. The line in the sand was drawn. Like Racak, it turned public opinion and Congress on the path of war. Months later we learned that Nayirah was the daughter of a Kuwaiti prince, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the U.S. She had left Kuwait before the Iraqi invasion. The story had been entirely fabricated by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton.

Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who chaired the hearing was co-chair (with Republican Rep. John Porter) of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation that occupied free office space in Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC office." One of the best documentation of this hoax can be found in a fascinating book, "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry" by John C. Stauber, Sheldon Rampton, 1995; (Common Courage Press; ISBN: 1-56751-060-4). Stauber and Rampton are Executive Director and Editor, respectively, of PR Watch, a newsletter published by the Center for Media and Democracy. An excerpt of the book on this PR issue was published in June 1996 by Claire W. Gilbert in her fine publication Blazing Tattles and can be read on line at and . It's an extraordinary read. PR Watch also recently posted these excerpts on their Web site, at .

Last May 2002, the former Hill & Knowlton staffer who was handling Nayirah made the claim that the story was true in O'Dwyer's PR Daily, an online access to the inside news of Public Relations but was forcefully rebuked by PR Watch Editor, Sheldon Rampton. See " The Devastating Effects of Sanctions Four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, on August 6, 1990, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 661, imposing comprehensive sanctions on Iraq and creating a committee to monitor them. The U.S. agreed to a cease fire with Iraq in February 1991. The cease-fire agreement required Iraq to eliminate its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and missiles with a range over 150 kilometers. Set forth in U.N. security resolution 687, the agreement tied the lifting of U.N. sanctions to the destruction of Iraq's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" arsenal. The no-fly zones over two-thirds of Iraq (north and south) were imposed by the U.S., France, and Britain a year and a half after the Gulf War. The United Nations never sanctioned them, and France has since withdrawn from participation.

The no-fly zones violate international law. According to Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, Iraq has the right to defend itself, including from U.S. and British overflights of the no-fly zones. The United Nations "Oil for Food" program became operational in 1996 and was instituted by the Iraq Sanctions Committee. All contracts for aid (emergency supplies as well as infrastructure equipment) requested by Iraq had to be approved by the Sanctions Committee. Each member country could place a hold on any contract it considered to have "dual use," that is, both civilian and military use. The U.S. repeatedly exercised its prerogative to withhold supplies to Iraq, vital to the civilian population. In an article, "Throttling Iraq," published in the Sept-Oct 2000 New Left Review, Tariq Ali described the circumstances confronting the civilian population of Iraq as follows: A land that once had high levels of literacy and an advanced system of health-care has been devastated by the West. Its social structure is in ruins, its people are denied the basic necessities of existence, its soil is polluted by uranium-tipped warheads.

According to UN figures of last year, some 60 per cent of the population have no regular access to clean water, and over 80 per cent of schools need substantial repairs. In 1997 the FAO reckoned that 27 percent of Iraqis were suffering from chronic malnutrition, and 70 percent of all women were anaemic. UNICEF reports that in the southern and central regions which contain 85 percent of the country's population, infant mortality has doubled compared to the pre-Gulf war period. The death-toll caused by deliberate strangulation of economic life cannot yet be estimated with full accuracy--that will be a task for historians. According to the most careful authority, Richard Garfield, 'a conservative estimate of "excess deaths" among under five-year-olds since 1991 would be 300,000', while UNICEF--reporting in 1997 that '4,500 children under the age of five are dying each month from hunger and disease'- reckons the number of small children killed by the blockade at 500,000.

Other deaths are more difficult to quantify, but as Garfield points out, 'UNICEF's mortality rates represent only the tip of the iceberg as to the enormous damage done to the four out of five Iraqis who do survive beyond their fifth birthday'. In late 1998 the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, former Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, an Irishman, resigned from his post in protest against the blockade, declaring that total deaths that it had caused could be upwards of a million. When his successor Hans von Sponeck had the temerity to include civilian casualties from Anglo-American bombing raids in his brief, the Clinton and Blair regimes demanded his dismissal. He too resigned, in late 1999, explaining that his duty had been to the people of Iraq, and that 'every month Iraq's social fabric shows bigger holes'. These holes have continued to tear under the Oil-For-Food sanctions in place since 1996, which allow Iraq $4 billion of petroleum exports a year, when a minimum of $7 billion is needed even for greatly reduced services. After a decade, the throttling of Iraq by the US and UK has achieved a result without parallel in modern history.

This is now a country that, in Garfield's words, 'is the only instance of a sustained, large increase in mortality in a stable population of more than two million in the last two hundred years'. ( ) In an interview for Zmagazine, Phyliss Bennis similarly explained the U.S. sanctions strategy as follows ( ): "...the targets included water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, electrical generating plants, communications centers, on the theory, I suppose, of dual use, that the Iraqi military also needs clean water, sewage treatment, communications, etc. and therefore the fact that the 23 million people of Iraq might be denied clean water was considered an acceptable consequence of that. So there were very direct efforts made by the U.S., and they were very successful efforts, to destroy these kinds of infrastructure centers. The result has been absolute devastation for the civilian population at enormous cost in the future to be repaired. As they erode further, the cost of rebuilding them of course will climb even higher. During this last set of military strikes, Operation Desert Fox, last December, at least one oil refinery was deliberately targeted on the grounds that that particular refinery's output was being used for smuggling. Whether it was or not, I don't know.

But whether it was or not, it is a violation of international law to deliberately target an economic target, as was chosen here, meaning that everyone in the Pentagon involved in that decision is guilty of a war crime. The inability of Iraq to make those repairs means that the continuation of malnutrition, of inadequate water supplies, and most importantly, perhaps, the largest number of casualties today, is the result of dirty, contaminated water because of inadequate sewage treatment and water treatment facilities. What that means is that children are dying in Iraq of eminently treatable diseases: diarrhea, typhoid, and other contaminated-water-borne diseases, in a country whose advanced health care system was so developed before the sanctions regime and before the bombings that the most important problem faced by Iraqi pediatricians was childhood obesity." That the U.S. intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure, including water treatment plants and that this would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (mostly children under the age of five), is not in dispute. "Several United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents clearly and thoroughly prove, in the words of one author, "beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S.

government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway" (The Progressive, August 2001)." High ranking U.S. Government officials were openly sanguine about the deaths of Iraqi children resulting from U.S. bombings and sanctions, as in this excerpt from an interview by Leslie Stahl of Madeleine Albright, broadcast on 60 Minutes on 5/12/96 ( ): Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it." The inescapable lesson is that a United States Secretary of State, on the one hand, and some groups that the U.S.

government condemns as terrorist, on the other hand, share a common rationale--a belief that the death of innocents, even children, is an acceptable price to pay for one's political goals. Reporters and editors for the mainstream media are well trained not to make such elementary observations, and as an exercise in patriotism find them inconceivable. United Nations weapons inspectors were ordered out of Iraq in 1998, not by the Iraqi government, but by the United States. In the words of Scott Ritter, a former U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq: "The U.S. ordered the inspectors out 48 hours before they initiated Operation Desert Fox military action that didn't have the support of the U.N. Security Council and which used information gathered by the inspectors, to target Iraq." U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives A Los Angeles Times article dated October 27 2002 appearing on the first page of the Business Section provided a possible agenda for the Bush administration for the Middle East.

The article, "Iraq Regime Change Could Weaken OPEC" included the byline, "Restoring the country's oil production capacity might be enough to break the cartel's grip on world markets," and included this explanation: Some industry analysts say the restoration of Iraq's production capability over the next decade might be enough to break OPEC's grip on world oil markets, even if Iraq remained a nominal member. "It's tough to see Iraq under any circumstances really participating closely with OPEC in the next five years," said analyst Raad Alkadiri of Petroleum Finance Co. in Washington. "If you have a government in Iraq that is closely tied to the United States and dependent on the United States for its continued power, it is conceivable that it will feel pressure to leave OPEC." U.S. Undersecretary of State Grant Aldonas cited the potential economic payoff during a recent trip to Poland.

A regime change, he said in Warsaw, would "open up the spigot on Iraqi oil, which would have a profound effect in terms of the performance of the world economy." The Washington Post offered a similar analysis in its September 15th, 2002 article entitled, "In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue" [16] ( ). The lead paragraph explains that: A U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries, and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi opposition. The article also includes some insights into the mechanisms employed by the Bush Administration to leverage international support for an invasion of Iraq: The importance of Iraq's oil has made it potentially one of the administration's biggest bargaining chips in negotiations to win backing from the U.N. Security Council and Western allies for President Bush's call for tough international action against Hussein. All five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- have international oil companies with major stakes in a change of leadership in Baghdad.

"It's pretty straightforward," said former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of forcing Hussein from power. "France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them." But he added: "If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them." Concluding Remarks Saddam Hussein does not deserve support from the progressive community, but Saddam Hussein is not Iraq. It is the people of Iraq who will do most of the dying when and if the U.S. attacks them, and the people of Iraq deserve our support. The claim that Iraq poses a grave danger to the rest of the world, and to the United States in particular, is so ridiculous that it would not even merit the attention of a rebuttal except for the fact that U.S. government propaganda has been so successful in fabricating that threat. Part of the propaganda success stems from completely unsupported claims that Saddam Hussein is in league with al Qaeda. The U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency has found no credible connection between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden and/or al Qaeda. Moreover, such an alliance is implausible. Iraq is a secular state whereas al Qaeda is fundamentalist, and the two do not mix well. Militarily, Iraq is far weaker in 2003 than it was in 1990 when the United States defeated Iraq's armies in a matter of hours. With at least 90% of its pre-Gulf War weaponry destroyed, Iraq is completely vulnerable to outside attack and poses no realistic threat to the United States, or to other countries. The U.S. accusation that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction (whether they actually exist or not) is subterfuge for the Bush administration's real agenda: control of the oil resources of the Middle East. The hypocrisy of U.S. policy toward Iraq may be seen by comparing it to U.S. policy toward other countries. For example, Israel possesses nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Israel has violated United Nations resolutions; it has threatened and attacked neighboring countries; and Israel is guilty of extensive human rights violations. Yet, there is no talk from Washington of weapons inspections in Israel, much less of an invasion of that country.

Indeed, the U.S. arms Israel and provides it with massive economic and political support. The ultimate hypocrisy in Washington's focus on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is that the U.S. itself leads the world in the possession and production of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. has weapons of every imaginable variety, including a nuclear arsenal sufficient to obliterate human life on this planet. If weapons of mass destruction were a real concern to Washington, weapons inspections and disarmament would begin at home. References [1] Ralph Schoenman, Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed, Veritas Press, Copyright 1990 [2] Hidden Wars of Desert Storm, Video narrated by Joel Hurt, Free-Will Productions. August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait | GulfNews.com August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait Published: 17:16 August 1, 2015 staff LARGE August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait 1990 -Iraq invades Kuwait to enforce its claims on Kuwaiti land and oil, sending shock waves through financial markets and drawing worldwide condemnation.

The Emir of Kuwait goes to Saudi Arabia where he is due to hold crisis talks with Arab leaders including his host King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Thousands of Iraqi troops poured across the border and had seized key installations in the capital, including the royal palace. Kuwait suffered between 100 and 200 casualties. The reported announcements included pledges to settle Baghdad’s complaints against Kuwait, which include demands for at least $2.4 billion in compensation. Iraq accuses Kuwait of having stolen oil from a field under their long disputed border and of overproducing, causing low oil prices which have harmed the Iraqi economy. US President George H W Bush, condemning the invasion as “naked aggression, sent warships steaming towards the Gulf but said he was not contemplating military intervention. Bush froze Iraqi assets in the US and banned trade with Iraq. Other important events 1824 Turkey captures island of Psara from the Greeks. 1847 William A. Leidesdorff launches the first steam boat in San Francisco Bay. 1858 British Parliament passes the India Bill, which transferred the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown.

1870 The first tube railway opens in London. 1928 Italy signs 20-year treaty of friendship with Ethiopia. 1934 Germany’s President Paul von Hindenburg dies, and Adolf Hitler assumes the title of Der Fuehrer. 1959 US military successfully tests heat-seeking missiles to be used by infantrymen. 1977 North Korea creates a ‘military sea boundary’. 1980 A bomb explodes at the train station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people. 1984 The three hijackers of an Air France jet surrender at Tehran airport after releasing 45 hostages before an explosion blows a hole in the fuselage of the Boeing 737. 1993 Serb gunners destroy a vital bridge in Croatia, severing the only land link between the southern Dalmatian coast and the rest of the country. 1997 The US ends a 20-year-old ban on the sale of most advanced weapons to Latin America. 1999 226 people die in India when two trains collide head-on at Gaisal, north of Kolkata.

2000 Armed youths demanding jobs have seize 165 people working for the oil company Royal Dutch/Shell, and are holding them hostage on two rigs in southeast Nigeria 2001 Former Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic is jailed and becomes the first person convicted of genocide by The Hague war crimes court. 2002 Australia and Malaysia sign a counter-terrorism pact. 2005 An Air France A340 jet with 309 people aboard overshot the runway at Toronto international airport and burst into flames after plunging into a muddy ravine. 2005 King Fahd, one of the world’s wealthiest monarchs, is laid to rest in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia. 2007 An overnight train derails in central Congo after its brakes fail, killing about 100 people. 2009 UAE swim team set a new national relay record at the Fina World Championships in Rome, clocking at 04:00:37, more than five seconds than last year’s national record.

2011 The main link on Africa’s fastest railway opens between Johannesburg and the South African capital Pretoria at speeds up to 160 kilometres per hour. 2014 An explosion kills at least 68 people at a factory that makes wheels in Kunshan city, China.

Question: In what month in 1990 did Iraq invade Kuwait?
Answer: August